The Ministry of Finance, the authority which is charged with the preparing of the national budget, has come under the spotlight over allocating similar amounts of money to different activities within its internal budget, something that has raised moral questions from the Members of Parliament.
CEO East Africa Magazine has seen the details of the 133 activities that had similar budget allocations in the Ministry of Finance with a total allocation of UGX138.911 billion.
Also, Finance Minister Matia Kasaija and his team were yesterday grilled by the MPs on the Budget Committee for allocating to the Finance Ministry vote, billions of Shillings to carry out activities that are supposed to be in the work plans of other ministries.
The unearthing of the two issues arose after Minister Kasaija claimed that the continuous stealing of public funds is as a result of moral degeneration among the public officials.
Responding to MPs’ questions on whether the Finance Ministry does follow up the money released for different programs and find out whether they have been utilized appropriately, Kasaija said he has no mechanism of stopping the misappropriation of funds.
“Money released is an issue of accountability and until the Auditor General gives information (on missing money), I have nothing to do. The question of guarding our resources eventually touches on the morals of our people. The population and economy suffers because of people who steal money,” the Minister stated.
The Minister was before the Budget Committee of Parliament which continues to scrutinize the UGX44.77 trillion budget estimates for the Financial 2021/2022.
It was after this statement that Kachumbala County MP Patrick Isiagi raised concern over the moral stand of the officials in the Ministry of Finance who continue printing similar information year after year after they spent UGX25 billion on procuring software to change the budget from output based to program-based.
“You have talked of morality but as a Ministry you have failed in printing the document for program-based budgeting every year. Morally, you have spent UGX25 billion to procure software to deal with this program-based budget. There is nothing new in these documents before us. You are aiding theft of money by printing budget information. You are very dubious in the way you do things” Isiagi charged.
To this, Minister Kasaija defended his ministry saying much as the systems for preparing documents aligned with program-based budgeting, they “themselves become corrupted”.
West Budama North legislator, Richard Okoth Othieno weighed in on the matter pointing out other irregularities in the detailed budget allocations for the different activities that will be implemented by the Ministry of Finance in the next Financial Year.
He picked out the UGX56 billion that has been budgeted by the Ministry to review the grant guidelines for the thematic performance improvement plan for micro-scale irrigation, a program that was supposed to be implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Water.
“In your own document on page 48, you allocated UGX56 billion on an activity that is supposed to be implemented by the other sectors. The Minister must be congratulated on this conceding that the money is being stolen but the stealing starts in his ministry through duplicating of activities” Othieno said.
Committee Chairperson Amos Lugoloobi also pointed out UGX9.6 billion that the Ministry budgeted for its internal spending on planting of trees and providing scholastic materials to needy children.
Responding to these issues, State Minister for Planning David Bahati said the money for such projects comes in form of Budget Support and the affected Ministries work together with Finance in implementing the activities.
“This money you talk about is for development plan implementation. We have allocated the UGX56.7 billion and money from the World Bank came to develop irrigation guidelines. We have a multi-sectoral coordinating team under the Ministry of Finance and the sectors are on the implementation committee and therefore this money is not for the Ministry of Finance” Mr Bahati stated.
Keneth Mugambe, the Director Budget, Ministry of Finance when questioned about how such money appropriated to the Finance vote is transferred to other sectors which are supposed to implement the specific activities, he said; “I think we have to check but the money is sent to the implementing agencies”
But Isiagi who is also the Committee Vice Chairperson unearthed several activities that were allocated a similar amount of money.
“What kind of coincidence is it that the same amount of money is allocated for different activities? Can this be that all the activities have the same outputs? There is no such budgeting, you are just throwing figures here,” he said.
Efforts by Minister Bahati to withdraw the document from Parliament so that it is first corrected at the Ministry were futile as MPs insisted they will use it as evidence against the syndicated stealing of funds. The Ministers and their technical experts have been given more time to return to Parliament to explain more on these allocations.
The CEO East Africa Magazine obtained the document that comprises the action plan of the ministry of Finance and the Money allocated to each activity. Analysis of the document obtained indicates that there are 25 different activities allocated UGX9.651 billion each; 16 activities to take UX3b each, 22 activities for UGX5.311b each, three activities for UGX56.785 billion each; and, three activities each taking UGX25.783 billion.
Other similar allocations are; six activities for UGX2.341 billion each; eight activities for UGX5.311 billion each; five activities for UGX9.340 billion each and five activities for UGX1.273 billion.
Tight Rules, Big Money: Energy Ministry Restricts Gold Trade to Licensed Operators as Central Bank Enters a UGX 20 Trillion Market Amount (UGX) Number of activities with similar allocation
2,341,112,500 6
9,651,870,105 25
25,783,523,000 3
3,001,600,000 16
2,015,800,000 4
5,596,826,800 6
4,791,167,660 8
438,000,000 11
5,311,459,210 22
1,273,917,815 5
120,000,000 3
9,340,082,900 5
827,191,000 2
4,125,144,732 7
2,629,569,859 3
766,184,262 9
993,280,000 3
3,119,815,715 2
56,785,000,000 3
